folkloric horror | Musings of the Monster Librarian

My library informed me that this year was the Return of the YA Vampire, and indeed we did see a number of YA vampire novels this year, not least of which was Stephenie Meyer’s latest addition to the Twilight saga, Midnight Sun.

For myself, I discovered I had read a number of very good books focused on witches and witchcraft.

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik was an interesting YA title that followed a teenage witch at a boarding school for witches, who is aggressively beleagured by her powerful talent in black magic that she is trying to avoid using. The school is regularly invaded by monsters who feed on the students and their magic and also surround the school, making survival until graduation and escape afterwards a deadly challenge. This is significantly different from Novik’s previous endeavors in alternate history and fantasy, and presents a unique twist on the “boarding school” genre.

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir is a strange combination of space opera, necromancy, and political maneuvering. In this book, there are nine Houses, each responsible for a different variety of magic. The Ninth House specializes in necromancy. When a competition for a high position working with the Emperor arises, each House is required to send a magic user with a bodyguard. Gideon, much against her will, reluctantly agrees to accompany Harrow, the powerful and very unpleasant necromancer who heads the Ninth House. I can’t even try to explain the puzzles, magic, politics, personalities, and relationship dynamics in this book except to say that Gideon and Harrow are a compelling pair, regardless of whether you love, hate, or are exasperated by either or both of them. The sequel, Harrow the Ninth, came out recently as well, and is also mindbending and disturbing.

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas is another #OwnVoices YA novel that has gotten a lot of press, and a lot of praise. Our main character, a Latinx trans boy, proves he deserves to be accepted in the coming-of-age ceremony for brujos, who can see, control, and banish ghosts. While not as thoroughly horrific as a genre reader might expect, the conclusion makes up for it, and this is an outstanding book with great representation.

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave is a terrifying work of historical fiction strongly grounded in fact, about a fishing village of women in an isolated, freezing location are left to manage everything on their own when the men are all swept away during a storm while they are on the water. Once the government steps in, the idea that women could be competent enough to take care of themselves suggests that at least some of them must be witches. I wrote a more extensive review of this book earlier this year and I really suggest that you read it, and then read the book.

Conjure Women by Afia Atakora is an #OwnVoices work of historical fiction with threads of horror and the supernatural throughout. It alternates between “slaverytime” and “freedomtime”. The “slaverytime” storyline takes place on an unnamed plantation in the South and follows Miss May Belle, the conjure woman responsible for healing, midwifery, and sometimes, casting curses and spells. The “freedomtime” storyline is told from the point of view of Rue, Miss May Belle’s daughter, who has taken over her responsibilities as conjure woman. The former enslaved people from a burned down plantation have built a hidden village nearby. While they respect Rue at first, after she delivers a baby with a caul over its head and an illness she can’t cure causes children to sicken and die, they turn against her. There’s no way to avoid horror when evoking slavery, and Atakora based a lot of her story on oral accounts and slave narratives. While the pacing was relatively slow and not everyone will appreciate the shifting points of view, I found this a compelling story.

The Graces by Laure Eve is a YA novel about a girl who believes she has magic and is looking for others like her. She finds them in the Grace siblings, beautiful and charismatic, who may or may not have magic. The narrator, identifying herself as River, is an unreliable reporter of events, making it a challenge to tell what is actually happening.

Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron is an #OwnVoices YA novel that explores what might happen after the happily ever after of the Cinderella story. If you’ve read any book about a repressive, patriarchal society, from The Handmaid’s Tale to The Grace Year, you’ll be able to guess that the answer is “nothing good”. 200 years after Cinderella married her true love, all teenage girls must know the government-approved version of the story by heart, and be ready to be chosen by an eligble man as his wife. Sophia would rather marry her friend Erin than any man, but she’ll have to take down the patriarchy to do it. I’d spoil the story if I revealed the part the witch takes in this story.

Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson is a dark tale of witchcraft, wildness, and the dangers of a patriarchal theocracy. Immanuelle is the child of a forbidden affair that led to her parents’ death and her grandparents’ ostracism, and she has been told never to enter the woods because dangerous witches live there and would seduce her into witchcraft. Entering the woods despite the warnings, she discovers her mother’s diary, which contains both evidence of her love for Immanuelle’s father and of a descent into madness. When inexplicable plagues begin to destroy her community, the head of the Church, known as the Prophet, decides they must be due to witchcraft and starts culling possible witches from the women, including Immanuelle. While the plagues send illness, darkness, and blood, the Prophet, his co-leaders, and his most devout followers are also sources of dark and terrible things.

Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson was a surprise to me! Despite appearing on a list of YA vampire titles (there are no vampires) and a title suggesting a zombie romp, this book actually centers on a fat, Mexican, teenage witch, Mila, who is grieving the sudden death (and probably murder) of her best and only friend, Riley, following the sudden deaths (and probably murders) of Dayton and June, popular mean girls at school, all of which have been chalked up to suicide. Mila discovers a grimoire with a dark spell that will allow her to bring Riley back from the dead for seven days to help prove and solve her murder, but when she casts it, she accidentally also brings back Dayton and June– and now they’re all connected okay, so maybe it is a little of a zombie romp, but the plot centers on Mila and her witchery). The reunion with Riley isn’t exactly what Mila expects it to be, and both Dayton and June turn out to be a little more three-dimensional than they seemed while they were alive and tormenting Mila. The mystery is pretty predictable– it’s the girls, and especially Mila, who make it fun. Anderson sensitively deals with grief, death, and friendship, with touches of humor.

The Once and Future Witches by Alix Harrow was also published this year, but I haven’t yet had an opportunity to read it. But there are great books of all kinds on witches, for teens and adults, for lovers for horror, fantasy, space opera, dystopia, and historical fiction… If you are looking for a little witchcraft to spice up your holiday season, you might want to check one of these out.

Searching for Sycorax: Black Women’s Hauntings of Contemporary Horror by Kinitra D. Brooks

Rutgers University Press, 2017

ISBN-13: 978-0813584614

Available: Hardcover, paperback

In Searching for Sycorax, Kinitra Brooks argues that horror has excluded black women except as an “absent presence” (such as the witch Sycorax from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, who has shaped the characters through her prior actions but does not appear in the play) and must allow black women a space that historically they have not been granted. Brooks contends that black women characters in horror are constructed problematically to further the character development of other characters, especially white women, through an examination of the characters of Selena from 28 Days Later and Michonne from The Walking Dead. Brooks notes that much critical examination of horror is focused on the experiences of white men and their binaries (white women and black men). Black women, then, are unseen in a great deal of critical horror theory simply because they fall outside these binaries.

Brooks then examines how black feminist literary theorists, in their work to have black women writers included in the canon, have excluded genre fiction and authors (such as Octavia Butler) from critical examination, even though there are horror elements in many classic works of black women’s writing. While black feminist literary theorists have often chosen to examine black women’s writing through the lens of trauma theory or a magical realist framework, Brooks makes an argument for using a critical horror studies approach to black women’s literary works, carving out a place specifically for black women’s genre fiction which she calls “fluid fiction”, using it to explore the works of Nalo Hopkinson. Brooks defines fluid fiction as fiction by black women writers that blurs the boundaries of speculative genres and challenges mainstream genre limitations. It centers black women, reflects the intersections of their oppressions, and is grounded in African religious practices and folkloric elements.

Brooks then suggests that the flowing nature of black women’s fiction, music, and art, can be used to redefine the horror genre using the framework of “folkloric horror”. Folkloric horror highlights and centers traditional African religions, such as Vodou and Santeria, treating them with respect; includes an acceptance of spirit possession; focuses on a young woman’s spiritual journey and discovery of the self, under the guidance of elders; and celebrates the black spiritual feminine. Many works by black women writers (such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day) explore horror tropes such as ghosts and curses in the context of the folkloric horror framework.

I have seen a lot of people recently saying that anybody should be able to write from any point of view. Searching for Sycorax argues that black women have a unique view that until recently has not only been unappreciated but has actually been unseen, despite its influence on genre writing. As I’m currently reading a companion collection of short stories I will say that I am finding the stories of black women writers of horror that I have read overall are fresh, genuine, and original in a genre that often depends on tired tropes without challenging them. It is difficult for me to imagine someone else writing them. Since Brooks’ book was initially published there has been work done to make the horror genre more inclusive, but it’s necessary to move beyond the argument that quality work will naturally rise to the top, and make a specific effort to seek out and promote quality work by black women to both widen the audience for horror and bring it to the attention of members of the horror community who may not be aware of it.

This is an academic book and the writing reflects that. Also, because Brooks is wide-ranging in the texts she covers, including some titles that may be more familiar to people in the horror community and some that may be more familiar to black feminist literary critics and readers, it requires some patience and work to read it through and understand (it is not easy to read literary criticism even if you are familiar with the texts being discussed). It is worth the effort to read this, as a continued effort is made for the horror community to grow as an inclusive space. This is an original and thoughtful exploration of a topic that has received little attention; it is the only book I have been able to find that focuses critically on the work of black women writers of horror fiction, and belongs in the collection of any academic library, although I hope it will find a much wider audience. Very much recommended.